Developing NMR Methods to Analyse Large Proteins

Agilent Technologies, Inc and the Agilent Technologies Foundation recently announced that professor Gerhard Wagner at Harvard Medical School has received an Agilent Thought Leader Award in support of his work using high-magnetic-field nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy to analyse large proteins. The award will total nearly $373,000 over three years to help the lab develop fast and efficient assignment methods for large proteins by NMR and make these methods accessible to the structural biology community.

“NMR spectroscopy has still a tremendous potential to grow and provide unique information about important biological systems, such as large multidomain proteins, protein complexes and membrane proteins,” Professor Wagner said. “I expect that innovations in NMR will come from new experimental schemes, supported by new expression and labelling schemes.

The award from the Agilent Foundation will be used to push such developments and make them widely available to the scientific community. This will provide tools for generating new insights into structures of large macromolecular complexes, understanding of biological mechanisms and design of new drugs to fight human disease.”

“We’re pleased to support Professor Wagner’s work of making the benefits of high-magnetic-field NMR spectroscopy

available to biologists investigating the vital roles that very large proteins play in the processes of life,” said Regina Schuck, Agilent Vice President and General Manager, Research Products Division. “Most government agencies fund research into the causes of diseases. In this case, we’re funding development of better tools for doing the research.”